


that's what young love is all about.

by orphan_account



Series: oh dear diary. [2]
Category: Little Mix (Band), One Direction (Band)
Genre: BFFs, Budding Love, Drunkenness, Established Relationship, F/F, F/M, House Party, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-09
Updated: 2013-09-09
Packaged: 2017-12-26 01:41:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/960091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Spiderman. The adjustment between Peter Parker and the hero is brilliant, I think.” He trails off, perhaps thinking he has bored her into slumber, and she allows him to stew for maybe ten minutes before piping up;</p>
<p>“My favourite is Gambit.”</p>
<p>“Loser.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	that's what young love is all about.

**Author's Note:**

> the second part. thank you so much to everyone who read part one, and the people who left kudos. i'm really really pleased you like it.

“It’s ‘muzjiks’.” Perrie looks up from yesterdays crossword with the memory of Jesy on her tongue, eyebrows raised, hair pulled back and teeth brushed with someone else’s toothpaste. Harry grins at her, and she rolls her eyes, resists the urge to poke his out with the end of her ballpoint. They aren’t friends, exactly, mostly because Louis has a strange idea that work friends and uni friends are to stay separate, but she knows all the boys in passing. Harry in particular, because he has a habit of wandering in on his break and trying on all the hats until she either laughs or swears at him. She looks back down at the newspaper and scowls, mouth twisting.

“What?” She can’t find what he means until he leans over and jabs his fingers across her careful lettering.

“‘Muzjiks’. A Russian peasant.” Fuck. Her scowl deepens and she scribbles in the answer not quite as carefully as perhaps she should.

“Thanks.” It’s not exactly bitter, but she knows she wouldn’t have gotten that in a million years. “How did you know that?” Harry’s grin deepens into insufferable dimples and she sets her pen down before she stabs him with it.

“I need something to beat Nick at Scrabble with.”

“Won’t he start noticing that you’re slipping over here every chance you get? He’ll start thinking you don’t fancy him anymore.”

“I don’t!” But his face flushes, and his eyes skirt across the street as he turns on the spot to lean back against the counter. Perrie curls her lip at his back, now that he can’t see, because honestly peacocking has never been something she’s understood and the way he cocks his hips and puffs his chest out and waits for his manager to look over at him is all kinds of puke worthy. “And he wouldn’t notice. And if he did I’d tell him I was buying socks.”

“Better buy some socks then.” Looks back down at the paper, and sighs, folds it away. It’s not fun if other people solve the clues for her. When she looks back up, Harry is gone, and she sighs again. At least with someone else around it isn’t mind numbingly dull.

Out of guilt, more than anything, she gathers up Louis’ duvet when she gets home – Spiderman covers and all – and hauls it all the way down to the dry cleaners. Thank God it hadn’t rained. The loser would never let her hear the end of it. There’s minimal damage, anyway, a few leaves and a dirt stain which might have been there before she gave it a helping hand towards its dream of being a parachute. Feeds the tumble drier her spare change then leans against it with her arms folded. Louis hadn’t come home either, the previous night, and she feels vaguely guilty about that too. Had she been too mean, and overstepped? No, that’s stupid. They’d always been like this. But Louis had always come home. She worries her lip between her teeth, heaves a sigh, and lifts two fingers from her elbow to wave at Jesy as the girl cycles past.

“Where’ve you been?” Louis has the nerve to ask her as she nudges the front door open with her hip, arms full and cheeks pink with exertion. Perrie nearly pitches the bedding out of the window again as she stares at him; hands curled around an X-box controller, clean shaven and obviously just out of the shower.

“You dickhead, you didn’t come home!” Throws it at him instead, then jumps on the blind pile he creates, digging her elbow into his ribs. “I should throttle you!”

“Were you worried?” She smacks his stupid smug face when it surfaces, not altogether lightly, with her knuckles.

“No, but I had to carry your fucking duvet to the launderette and back by myself, with my little bird arms.” Shifts so that they’re both comfortable, her cheek pressed to his temple, his arms around her waist.  
“You threw it in the first place.”

“You pushed me into a hedge, fuck off.”

“Fair enough.” She feels his grin, and smiles too, for the first time that day. 

“Hey, I talked Liam and Niall into it.”

“What, a threesome?”

“What? No, shut up. A party. Tonight, if you wanted to come.”

There’s something loud and thumping on the stereo when she and Lou eventually turn up, half drunk on too-strong vodka cocktails and carrying Sambuca, Baileys and a crate of beer between them. Perrie has come prepared for Slippery Nipples and slippery kisses, grins fumes at Niall when he stares at her while squirreling away some sort of patterned dish.

“Per, please keep an eye on him!” For an Irishman, Niall does not exactly do wild parties, it seems. At least, not in his own house. “Don’t let him in my room!” She salutes anyway, looks around at the writhing dancing mass in their living room and thinks to herself how weird he is for hiding his things. None of them are interested in fondling objects when there are other people in the room, that much is glaringly obvious. Jesy is in one corner, waist held in two hands stronger than Perrie’s, but she does not allow herself to feel jealousy when she knows that Jesy gazes after her on her way into the kitchen. It may have had something to do with her running her fingers over her bare shoulders when she’d passed, but Perrie won’t admit that. It’s a guess that helps her find shot glasses, and the kitchen itself is deserted. Later she learns that Liam has a barrel with ice and beer cans in the living room. Perrie is not drunk enough to be excited by the fully clothed orgy the rest of the party has become. It is not as intimate as she had wanted, and Louis has abandoned her for his grown up friends (although she can hear him crowing over the sound of bass and laughter, thinks again on his Peter Pan syndrome and blows air through her nose). 

Five shots of equal parts Irish cream and aniseed spirit later she sits crosslegged on the table, cigarette between her fingers as she hums along to the music (much better, jangly indie guitars and keyboards), not really noticing that she has company until a golden hand is being waved in her face. And ah, she knows him by reputation of course, but she has never had the special pleasure of speaking to Zayn Malik. He is every bit as beautiful as Louis had promised, eyes large and framed by mascara-advert-length eyelashes, smile twisting at his lips.

“Y’alright?” He is drunk, too, she can smell the hops and yeast on his breath and it makes her grin. “Lou sent me to come an’ get you, but y’look alright to me. Y’alright?”

“Of course.” And she twists to pour him a drink, too much Sambuca and not enough Baileys, sloshing it over her fingers as she hands it to him. 

“What’s this?” He smells it, and there is a seconds worth of delay before he makes a face.

“Slippery Nipple.”

“Pardon?”

“Definitely something you want in your mouth.” He laughs so hard he chokes on the liquid sliding down his throat, and briefly (filthily) Perrie wishes she had a dick to feel that.

“You can tell you live with Lou.” He wipes his mouth, and she wants to put her fingers between his lips to feel his tongue. She settles for uncrossing and spreading her legs, leaning back on her palms and sticking her chest out until she can see the flustered purple creep from his cheeks to his collarbones.

“Yeah? How’s that, then?” She gets a rush, dick-eyelashes-flush filthy, from the way his doe eyes drag from the leather of her knee-highs to the chiffon of her blouse, the black strap of her bra fallen around her elbow.

“Y’both trouble in tight clothes.” And then they’re kissing, for once evenly matched, Zayn’s hands in the small of her back hauling her close and licking into her mouth and she wonders if he can taste the cigarette burning a hole into the table on her tongue as their hips clash and rock like waves.

“My clothes are not that tight.” But she can feel his palms following her ribs and waist and maybe they are, maybe they are.

“And I reckon you don’t think you’re that much trouble, either.” He leans back and God, she’s ashamed of how she chases his mouth like some lovesick teenager, her legs long wrapped around his waist like it doesn’t occur to her that he might not do this all the time. “Lou’s told me all about you, y’know. His poor bedding.”

“He always deserves it!” Then the door is opening and Zayn is dropping her like she’s on fire.

“This is where you two are--. Shit! The table!” It’s Louis, and Perrie could punch him, her mouth and lips and teeth and tongue tingling from Zayn, watching the man tug his button-down over his crotch. It takes her a moment to realise that the table is smoking. Perrie screams, and then there is chaos until Liam pushes Zayn out of the way and covers the embers with a tea towel. She makes the appropriate gagging noise when Louis gazes at him lovingly, but shrinks when they both glare at her.

“What the fuck, Per? I never said you could smoke inside!” In hindsight, Liam has always been this tall, this sensible, this scary.

“I’m sorry! I didn’t thi--.”

“Nah, you never do.” And Liam takes Louis’ hand and pulls him away, neither of them even glancing at her. She bites both lips together, guilt gnawing at her insides, and looks to the floor she’s hopped down to stand on.

“That was as much my fault as yours.” But she doesn’t trust herself to answer, eyes watering, throat closed up as Zayn wraps a hand around her elbow. “Liam’ll get over it.” She nods. She hopes he’s right, because he is important to Louis, and Louis is important to her. “D’you want me to take you home?” She carries on nodding and hates herself for her silence, for the softness in Zayn’s voice, for the softness of his thumbs when he takes her face in his hands and wipes away ashamed and chastised tears.

“D’you really think Liam’ll get over it? Was Louis cross when we left?” She is wearing his leather jacket and he has his arm slung over her shoulders, and Perrie is ashamed of how safe that makes her feel as he walks her up the mildew stained stairwell of her apartment building.

“Payneo’s always been a bit anal about his house--.”

“-- and other things--.”

“But I don’t think you have anything to worry about, pet.”

“Perrie.” She sniffles, looks up at him when they draw to a stop outside her flat. “My name’s Perrie. Everyone I love is at that party. Louis isn’t going to come home tonight.” She blames the liquor for this softness, for the way she looks up at him and wants and needs him wrapped around her fingers and ribs and neck and soul. Zayn shifts his weight, swallows, and zips his jacket up to trap her arms.

“Going to let us in, then? Stick the kettle on?” And she does, because she doesn’t want to ask him to stay, and he doesn’t want to be asked.

Their tea ends up half drunk and cold on the floor of her bedroom, her curled up under her blankets in her underwear, head pillowed on his elbow while he lays on his back fully clothed besides jacket and boots, on top of duvet and sheets like he doesn’t want to touch her bare skin. Perrie is watching him look at her ceiling, at the glow in the dark stars she and Louis had broken her bed jumping to stick up there, his eyes lidded and dark and framed with those obscene lashes.

“I like Batman.” His voice rumbles out of him, and she sniffs, eyes snapping open where she’d been half asleep. “I think if I could decorate my room I’d paint comics all over it.” 

“He doesn’t have powers, just money.” She mumbles into his elbow, sighing deeply as she wriggles to get comfy again.

“Never said he was my favourite.” Perrie can hear the grin, rather than see it, because she’s closed her eyes again before the room starts to spin.

“No? Who is, then?”

“Spiderman. The adjustment between Peter Parker and the hero is brilliant, I think.” He trails off, perhaps thinking he has bored her into slumber, and she allows him to stew for maybe ten minutes before piping up;

“My favourite is Gambit.”

“Loser.”

“Fuck off or I’ll bite you and refuse to give you breakfast.”


End file.
